The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival awarded the Best International Feature Film Award to Danish filmmaker Christian Einshøj’s The mountainsa portrait of a tragedy-stricken Scandinavian family.
Einshøj also won the award for best emerging international filmmaker at the Toronto festival, which awarded top jury prizes on Saturday. Hot Docs opened its 30th edition with another Danish film, Colonized twiceLin Alluna’s feature film about the Greenlandic Inuit lawyer and protector of her ancestral land, Aaju Peter, after a world premiere at Sundance.
The Canadian Documentary Festival also awarded the special jury prize for best international feature film to director Edward Lovelace call me Lawand, which follows a young deaf Kurdish boy who happily learns communication skills at a British school after a treacherous journey from Iraq, only to be later deported from his new home.
Other winners included the Best Canadian Feature Documentary award, which went to director Denys Desjardins’ I lost my mother. The prize for the best short film went to Iranian director Milad Khosravi Husband of Mrs. Iranan exploration of family and labor in Iran.
There was also an honorable mention for Micah Levin’s Dear Ani, about an aspiring songwriter’s creatively obsessive correspondence with music icon Ani DiFranco.
The award for best mid-term doc went to Being in a Place – A Portrait of Margaret Taitby director Luke Fowler, and the Special Jury Prize for Best Canadian Feature Film was won by Caiti Blues, by director Justine Harbonnier.
A total of 214 films from 72 countries will be screened at Hot Docs in Toronto from April 27 to May 7.
